Mark Sharman scored one of the TV sports rights' coups of the last 12 months when ITV poached live FA Cup and England matches from the BBC.

The £425m joint deal with pay-TV broadcaster Setanta was a bitter blow for the corporation, and cemented ITV's status as the terrestrial television home of live football.

Appointed ITV director of sport at the beginning of 2005, Sharman oversees a portfolio that includes live Champions' League football, formula one motor racing, World Cup rugby and a revival of live Saturday night boxing, as well as the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race and the Tour de France.

His role at the broadcaster was expanded earlier this year when he took over responsibility for all of its network and regional news output from Clive Jones, who retired.

Sharman has held a wide range of executive posts overseeing news and sport programming for ITV, BSkyB and Channel 4. A former deputy managing director of Sky Sports, he was appointed Channel 4's controller of sport in 1998, helping mastermind the plan to snatch Test cricket rights from the BBC - he is making a habit of this - and revolutionising live coverage of the sport.

He moved back to BSkyB a year later, rising to become deputy director of Sky Networks. He took 14 months out of the industry between leaving Sky and joining ITV.

While live FA Cup and England games are on their way from the BBC to ITV, one of ITV sport's best-known presenters Gaby Logan moved the other way after Sharman replaced her as the channel's main football anchor with Steve Rider.

Sharman now has his eye on the 2008 European Championship and the 2010 World Cup in a bid to reverse the trend that sees the BBC win the biggest audience whenever live football is shown on both channels. Last year's football World Cup final was the BBC's biggest ratings victory yet.

Sharman said his job is to create "an entity that is ITV Football". Agents for those presenters and pundits on the BBC who are suddenly left with no regular live football are presumably on high alert.

A former print journalist at the Derby Evening Telegraph and Birmingham Evening Mail, Sharman moved into TV sport in 1976 with ITV's World of Sport, editing the broadcaster's coverage of the football World Cup and Olympic games.

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